NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Like a lot of children, Christmas was a magical fun time for me. I “bought into” all of the fun things that the grownups did to make me believe in Santa Claus.
Let me tell you some of the things that went on. First of all, my parents and older brother, Hal, hid all of the presents and the Christmas tree so that when I went to bed on Christmas eve the house was bare. When I got up in the morning there was a brightly lit Christmas tree with presents under it.
They must have been up half the night to pull that one off. Later my parents said let us put the tree up before Christmas so we can have the fun of decorating it and Santa won’t have to work so hard. I knew Santa got my letter because he knew exactly what to bring.
I noticed that there were multiple Santas around town but mother explained that he moved around a lot so that all the children could talk to him. I was convinced that the Santa on the radio was the one true Santa, even though some of the ones I saw on street corners might have been helpers.
In school right after Thanksgiving, we would start practicing Christmas carols. This did nothing but amplify the hype. I learned to play “little Town of Bethlehem ” and played it in class the day before Christmas. I only hit four wrong notes.
After Christmas, we would have a debriefing at school. It was fascinating to listen to the children who swore up and down to have seen or heard Santa. When I was on the bubble between belief and disbelief, Santa pulled off the miracle of getting me an electric train engine. Since we were at war in Europe and the Far East, there was a little such things were scarce and my parents warned me that Santa might not be able to find an electric train engine.
Certainly my parents could never pull it off. This stretched my belief in Santa for another year.
Fifteen years later my brother-in-law, Vernon, set a record for old age in believing in Santa. When confronted he explained that he figured that he would get more stuff if he pretended to believe.
Naturally, I finally learned that there was no such thing as Santa Claus, but that did not ruin Christmas for me as we always had a good time with family and friends getting together.
The final stage was taking over for Santa. This has always made me nervous for fear of failure. I was once the Santa at a fraternity Christmas party at MIT that we put on for an orphanage in Boston. I survived the experience, but afterward I overheard one of the little kids say, “I don’t think he was for real, he didn’t go ho! ho! ho! enough.” It was an ordeal for me.
One of the last stages in the Christmas sequence here in New Smyrna was putting on a party on Christmas eve.
We discovered that surprisingly many people didn’t have anywhere to go on Christmas eve so the party was well attended. The final step was hiring Mr. and Mrs. Claus to visit the party and give toys to the children. The adults loved it as we found a Santa who was really good at it and the children ate it up. Unfortunately, we had to fire the elf, as he seemed to have a bad attitude and couldn’t get into the swing of things.
One interesting by play on this was my granddaughter, Mallory, trying to sneak out and watch Santa come up with his reindeer. We explained that the PETA people did not allow Santa to use his reindeer in New Smyrna Beach and so he had to drive a Chevy. (It was a temptation to say that the government transportation taxes on sleighs was so high that he had to use a car.)
As yet another Christmas is here, I feel that I am the luckiest person alive in being able to have so much exciting activity at the ripe old age of 76. I have multiple hobbies, friends, and the opportunity to make so many people informed through this blog on NSBNews.net, especially liberals.
NSBNews.net is Florida's first fully-online 24/7 Internet newspaper launched April 7, 2008, in New Smyrna Beach. It is led by award-winning journalist Henry Frederick and award-winning blogger Peter Mallory with emphasis on breaking news, news of record and investigative reporting here, and even throughout the Sunshine State, when we can.
